Experimental
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We tend to associate ambient music with pleasant sounds. It’s an artificial distinction of course. Many of the genre’s most creative works – particularly in recent years – are packed with grainy, abrasive elements that on their own can be quite difficult to listen to. Placed in the right context though, they often provide welcome…
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Alt Empordà, which sits on the northeastern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, is best known internationally for its Dali Theatre Museum. Visitors can find many of Salvador Dali’s original works there. In January, the picturesque comarca was slammed by an EF2 category tornado with winds as high as 180 km/hr. Damage was reported in Cistella,…
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When people talk about the 1980s, it’s often in hyper-pop-culture terms. Hair gel, shoulder pads, synth pop, yuppie culture, etc. In fact, it was an intense, often serious time both culturally and artistically. Americans chose a former B-movie actor of questionable intelligence to be their president. On the other side of the Cold War, we…
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Mathias Delplanque is back with a new live recording, laid down in May of last year with his KEDA partner E’Joung-Ju during the fifth edition of the Festival Printemps Coréen. Live at Cosmopolis is a spacious, meandering improv piece that features Delplanque on live sampling and bass and E’Joung-Ju on a traditional six-stringed wooden Korean…
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Despite its proud political and intellectual history, its moderate climate and breathtaking landscape, Greece is a difficult place to call home. A debt crisis near the end of the last decade transformed the country from a tourist mecca that delivered its citizens a comfortable lifestyle into an economic pariah. Ten years later, the national unemployment…
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Balmorhea fans were delighted to see a new release from the Austin, Texas-based band last year. Clear Language was the first we’d heard from Rob Lowe and Michael Muller in five years. The warm reception earned by the duo’s sixth album was epitomized by NPR’s Bob Boilen, host of All Songs Considered, confessing: “I’m madly…
The Moderns 